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Archive for January, 2015

I am not a car nut and almost always choose public transport, a bike or shank’s pony to get around but I have always had a real love of classic cars and through our Classic Car Boot Sale events. I have learnt that just about anyone wandering within eyesight of a line-up of classic car vehicles will dip in their pockets and pay a few quid to get up close and personal. When Gerardine and I got together at the turn of the 80s and shacked up in London, the first of a series of classics was a gorgeous Standard Vanguard.

On our eldest kids 17th birthdays we bought them dirt cheap, but so cool, Datsun 120Y’s.

As a family we have regularly bemoaned the dearth of decent visual design in modern mass market cars. I often question whether we just don’t have the foresight to see that today’s designs will be classics in the future but there is always that underlying feeling that actually today’s cars are just so damn boring.

Then yesterday I read an article by Norman Foster issue 338 of Blueprint Magazine. He was talking about his new book Havana Autos and Architecture and eulogising about the wonderful old architecture and classic cars that can’t help but catch the eye in Cuba. He talks about despite the lack of money, the love, devotion and time many Cubans put into their 60 year old Chevvies, Oldsmobile’s and Pontiacs and comes up with one telling quote: “It seemed to me that soon everything in Cuba might be like anywhere else in the world . Gone would be the exotic vehicles like dinosaurs from an age long past, to be replaced by the technically superior but characterless cars of today.” – Norman Foster

So why can’t we have uplifting visual design to match the wonderful reliability and technology that we get with new cars. Does functionality have to quash serendipity? We need the car manufacturing equivalent of Apple (or dare I say it Ikea) to come along and shake up the industry.

Boy how we here at HemingwayDesign would love to work with a big car manufacturer and try to marry their technological skills with beauty. – Wayne Hemingway

A seaside town that the press often depicts as a bit of a basket case. I have one word for it: amazing! Margate is truly walking with a swagger these days. People are moving from their one bedroom flats in London to a four bedroom house and opening cafes, gallery shops.

Every time I go there I see more young couples doing something interesting with an old building. There is a cultural institution there, The Turner Contemporary that has helped to “gild brand Margate”. Margate is not being given a leg up by city folk like in Whitstable. These are young, often creative, without vast sums of money who are spotting an opportunity that is relatively affordable evocative property, a sandy beach, within reach of London and some likeminded pioneers. My god its exciting there. I look at it as a place full of exciting opportunities. You know that in ten years’ time it won’t be a failed Portas High St – it’ll be a cool town.

Now as the opening of Dreamland Margate fast approaches part of the HemingwayDesign team are spending a decent chunk of every week in Margate and we are seeing, at first hand, the town starting to do what Brighton started to do at pace in the late 60s, 70s and early 80s and start to attract a community that will form the bedrock to a more financially and culturally vibrant town. Like many seaside towns Margate still has its drug and street drinking problems, but there are now many less depressing things to take the eye. As the train times to central Kent towns and London gradually become eroded, as more decent employment opportunities materialise, and as affordability in London becomes increasingly out of reach for many, the wealth of relatively low cost “projects” in terms of properties that need TLC is attracting “pioneers “ on a weekly basis.

Of course there are those who have spotted the opportunity to “invest” in property in Margate, but at least these are not the Far Eastern and Russian “squirrel our money way in a safe haven Buy to Leave Empty property” buyers that are blighting the London housing market. For every person that is spotting an opportunity to get a return on investment, there is someone willing to give Margate a go as a home and a place to work from.

There is positive form of gentrification going on, and bring it on, because the rebirth of Margate, London’s sandy beach is one helluva an uplifting story.

Dreamland when it finally reopens this summer will be another milestone and being part of helping this great British seaside town to rediscover its mojo is a responsibility that we are not taking lightly.

When I get a new phone the first thing I do is clear the phone of apps like Angry Birds that come preloaded and that I would never use! I do occasionally hear of an app that sounds great but that never gets used (do I really need Stopwatch Pro?) but on the whole other than weather, news, calendar, note taking, maps and public transport timetables my phone gets used for making calls, emailing and taking photos. But one app based service has come along that is exciting in that it is easy to use, speeds up a process and saves money. Everything that mobile technology should do.

My new favourite app is the mini cab booking service Uber. There are times when public transport is a difficult option and I have to resort to a taxi. In London black cab prices have increasingly “upset” my thrifty sensibilities. The once affordable Addison Lee became no longer a cost effective option and mini cab offices are rarely where you want them and often a bit seedy. The simple Uber app based system of hailing a taxi is obvious and engaging (watching all those Uber drivers driving near your location like ants on your phone feels very modern). Uber prices blow the competition out of the water and my experience with speed of arrival is phenomenal. I was in an Uber cab last week and asked the driver how it was working. He said it had revolutionised his life. He was cab driving as part of making his family life work financially. He had been working for a mini cab office 10 hours a day to bring in enough income. By going alone on the Uber system he could earn enough in 6 hours and he got his payment straight into his account without any hassle.

A service that improves the lot of the provider and the user in terms of efficiency and in monetary terms is a design and business holy grail.

But is it too good to be true? Those that are threatened (the likes of the black cab driver and the wealthy Addison Lee) are constantly saying that anyone can be an Uber driver and that there is no control, but I find it hard to see what the difference is between Uber driver screening and what black cab drivers have to go through to become registered drivers. Lobbying against Uber from the competition is getting louder and when I read this last week about Uber being banned in Delhi I started to wonder how long it will be before my re kindled love affair with cost effective late night cabs will last.

Seeing that Shredded Wheat advert on telly that is built around a lifelong follower of what to some of us is the a lifelong music passion, Northern Soul, it made me realise how in today’s mass media world how nothing (unless it’s illegal, devoutly uncommercial or totally crap) remains underground.

Northern Soul was a movement that was limited to a few dozen clubs (mainly in the North West & North Midlands of England) over a period of a decade or so from the turn of the 70s. The Wikipedia page is not a bad starting point I started to go to Wigan Casino in 1974 and Blackpool Mecca a year later. I met my wife Gerardine at Angels in Burnley on the famous Wednesday Soul Night.

It was truly an underground scene, mainly working class teenagers (with more boys than girls attending most soul nights) travelling to the same clubs. You would see the same faces wherever you went. I would guess that there were less than 10,000 people into the scene (ie less than would go and watch Blackburn Rovers on a Saturday!) The only way to find out about the scene was by word of mouth, by subscribing to pretty obscure magazines like Black Echoes and Blue and Soul or by late night shows on local radio stations.

I love the fact that the musical movement that I genuinely believe is the greatest ever is reaching wider and younger audiences and that when we hold our Soul Casino events as part of Vintage, we get dance floors packed with a diverse crowd.

It is technology and social media that has allowed Northern Soul to have its time in the wider public eye. You Tube is a wonderful tool to listen to the music, the brilliant Discogs makes it easy to track down the vinyl, and the internet has allowed communities to build and to bring enough people together to make events pay for themselves.

The purists who prefer things kept to themselves can moan all they like, but I love the fact soul music, the soundtrack of my life, is there for everyone to enjoy and I can go out dancing with people of all ages, some who are on the same voyage of discovery as Gerardine and I were 40 years ago.

The Evening Standard have covered the news that the population of London is about to surpass its 1939 peak and there is a lot discussion going around about London being full and “overheated”. The ES asked me for some quick thoughts. This is what I wrote…

Gerardine my now-wife and I came to London from Lancashire when we were still teenagers in 1980. We took a stall on Camden Market for £6 a day, one in Kensington Market for £12 a week and soon after leased a shop in Neal Street for £60 a week. We could buy a 3 bed house two years later for £22,000 at a time when an average house cost a little over three times the average salary. It was possible to work towards a goal without having to borrow large amounts of money or rely on parental help. The chance for two wide eyed 18 year olds from Lancashire to come to these wonderful bright lights do the same today has been stripped away. Our daughters tells us how many of their friends with partners are leaving London with a heavy heart, or considering leaving. It’s all about accommodation, the difficulty in the capital of fulfilling the natural human instinct to build a nest.

What are the solutions? One part of the jigsaw is more institutional build-to-rent of the kind I worked on with Get Living London in the Olympic Village after the Games, with a social housing element and a non-social element. Somehow society needs to find a way to secure a return on investment on institutional rental properties to bring this type of tenure up to the level that exists in Germany. People will always want to own, but renting shouldn’t be such an inferior option.

There’s also a locational aspect. We’ve had office space in Wembley since 1980. It’s only 18 minutes and 2 stops from the West End by the Metropolitan Line but it’s hardly moved on in 30 years. There are streets of inter war housing that could actually benefit from intelligent densification, sprawling, single storey industrial estates with underutilised space to develop. What is being built at the moment is, on the whole, bog-standard, pack-‘em-in sardines developments lacking in vision and potentially damaging in terms of attracting a community who will help to give the place “soul”.

It’s a myth that London is full up and “overheated” – between Wembley, Neasden, Harlesden and Harrow, or equivalent areas in other parts of the capital, there are lots of places that scream “opportunity”. I abhor as much as anyone the idea of overseas investors buying up property on the Battersea Power Station site and the like and leaving it empty, but moan all we like, we have to recognise that the problem is not going to be solved right now; far better to be positive and take what action we can to improve the housing situation. Force developers to do all schemes on an open book basis; if profits are high, make it a requirement for the amount of social housing to increase. Split large developments between a numbers of developers, as in continental Europe, helping promote competition. Rather than housebuilders being primarily concerned about making money for shareholders, we could legislate to ensure a key priority of theirs is to serve society by developing better and more affordable housing.